Day 143 (Actually from 3 days earlier, but this day was so busy I didn't take a single picture!) Our homeschool group had a presenter from Mad Science to tell us about the sciene of magic and detective science. It was fascinating!

Week 23 {SOOC} Straight Out Of Camera | I’m just coming out of a badly timed photography slump, so I thought this week’s theme would be wonderfully easy for me. I’ve made a point of learning to expose well first and not rely on post processing, so most of my pictures come out of the camera looking okay, even though I shoot RAW. But of course, this week I’m not super happy with any of my pictures and I’ve been clicking through them for a while trying to make up my mind which one to share.

This is one of my favorite images of the week. Above you can see the SOOC (straight out of camera) version. That means it’s exactly what my camera sensor recorded, with no processing whatsoever. It was a moment of good timing and quick thinking and luck. I had already shot several pictures of the kids at the park when I turned and found my daughter sitting here, nicely backlit. I don’t recall whether I even needed to call her name; she often likes posing for me and will do so automatically when I point the camera in her direction.

For comparison, you can see how I edited it. I didn’t do very much. I increased the highlights and shadows, cropped in a bit closer and straightened it. Apparently I can’t hold my camera straight because so often I need to straighten my pictures!

Week 17 {motion blur} During this week that zoomed by I barely practiced catching motion blur and this is the best I got. Not that it’s hard to get blur. It’s really quite easy. But to make it look good I think faces should still be sharp while only moving things like bike wheels and swinging swords should be blurry. I will work more on it!

Day 339 Bare feet in December? amazing! We spent this unseasonably warm afternoon with friends at the park by the river. Manual 50mm f/5.6 1/250sec ISO100 In Lightroom, I lowered the exposure, increased clarity, and cropped slightly.